❮❮prevnext❯❯

So, one question I wrote about a few years ago: why do so many people conflate "openness" and "vulnerability", when to me they seem diametrically opposed - like, because I'm so resilient, and so not vulnerable, I am able to be fully open and candid about myself.

Talking with my sweetie L. - she desperately wants me have a more gushing kind of way, to be a good return the lift force on the seesaw of romance, and to live less gated, both for my sake and the sake of the viability of the romance. But during one conversation it hit me that there's confusion when people talk about "openness".

One sense, the one I was running with before, is "openness to inspection" - candor, fearlessness in introspection. I have that in spades.

But there's another sense: "openness to change", flexibility, the possibility of growth. And sure, in that case I have a lot more work to do.

(And ironically, being good at the first kind of openness can make you worse at the second; you give reasons and justifications and explanations but then it sounds like you're digging in your heels. I mean growth and change ISN'T easy, and you also have to trust that the changes being asked for are ultimately a good kind of growth, but hopefully understanding why things are they are doesn't become an excuse for leaving them that way.)

So. L lives more viscerally, I live more gated. The example that I keep coming back to was when we were watching "Alien: Romulus" with her boys. Her reaction to the jump scares was almost comic... like REALLY jumping along with it. And I was enjoying the movie's thrills, but I wasn't really that MOVED (literally) by them.

In other conversations L has framed my way of living as a "control thing" - a description on one level I kind of hate and reject, but on another level I have to admit has some truth to it...if I'm not careful I'd always live gated and never going for the gusto.

So why do I resist the "control thing" phrasing? Two things: one is, my "control" is not so much a conscious choice- it's just the way I've subconsciously shaped myself. So I'm "controlled" yeah, but like.. I'm not *controlling* the control, not deciding to control. And to me, "control" is more an act of will. (In fact, going forward I'll have to use a higher level of willful control in order to live LESS controlled, less gated...)

The second objection is... "control" for me is a means, not an end. I'm not in control for the sake of control, it's to serve the greater purpose of my sense of obligation to the world. Like, I can't live up to what the world needs from me if I'm not reliable, and I guess over the years I found raw driving emotions to be unreliable. I get worried about letting an unruly inner child run the place.

That's a place for growth that I am still dealing with. My subconscious self, the hubbub of internal parts that make up me? It's a rowdy bunch. I don't know if years living with a level of "rational" control means my internal family is less grown up than others? But between, like, the angst and anxiety I get around work and what not, my inability to make good eating decisions in the moment (if delicious food is available at hand, it's pretty much game over for me, willpower wise), the ferocious anger that sometimes comes out, just rage at malfunctioning programs or unreasonable greedy people? I admit it feels like a reason to be worried about living more viscerally and directly.

But, "gated, uptight, and implacable is no way to go through life, son". Going through my 70-80s years here on the planet without sucking more marrow out of life seems like a loss, and that's some of why it's worth pushing on this. And also for the sake of L.